Ancient Human Impacts on California Birds

Recent work with the rich archaeological avifauna from the Emeryville Shellmound of
San Francisco Bay has documented that the avian landscape of the region was fundamentally
anthropogenic. Large-sized species or those otherwise sensitive to human harvesting
were hardest hit by human foragers of the late Holocene. Ongoing work with other collections
from the region provide independent tests of the patterns documented at Emeryville.